


Their Exchanges

by nonakani



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Past Character Death, Rebellion Story References, Rebellion Story Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-21 01:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1533218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonakani/pseuds/nonakani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While being escorted through a strange place by even stranger black-clad girls, Kyouko and Mami think about the perfect world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Their Exchanges

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annwyd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annwyd/gifts).



> Admittedly, they're only really Rebellion Story spoilers if you know what they're referring to already. Most of the movie doesn't really factor in at all.
> 
> Regardless, I like the concept I ended up exploring, even if the fic turned out kinda short.

A tiny girl in a black dress leads her by the hand.

Kyouko vaguely remembers wearing similar clothing, what feels like a lifetime ago, on the day of her family's funeral.  She had paid her respects at a distance, curled up in the trees that lined the graveyard like a bird shivering in its nest, clutching black fabric in her hands and between her knees.  And again she wore black for Sayaka's wake; again she watched from as far away as she possibly could, even hunger unable to move her until long after Homura and even Mami had left.

Their earlier days feel like a sweet dream, a beautiful impossibility.  It’s hard for her, sometimes, to remind herself of what things were like before Sayaka gave herself up, before Homura grew suddenly and startlingly distant, but Kyouko has long since learned that all dreams ended.

Though the place she is being taken through sure feels enough like a dream.  There is a certain weight to everything here - all swirling colors and checkerboard path, not-quite-right and completely wrong all at once and dizzying to focus on any one thing - that she can't shake off.  She’s positive that she should feel more uneasy.

Still walking, Kyouko leans to the side to get a better look at the girl in front of her, her grip still firm.  Her footsteps are in time with Kyouko’s own.  “So, how much longer, exactly?” she asks.

The girl glances back, her eyes wild and wide grin unfaltering, but gives no answer before turning away from her again.  Kyouko thinks she hears the girl chanting, jeering under her breath at some unseen performance in a language that Kyouko is sure she’d heard before, somewhere.  She wonders if she should be unsettled by it.

Kyouko rights herself and scoffs; she is sure that, if she listens closely, she would be able to figure out what the girl was saying, but trying to concentrate on what she’s muttering makes her head ache.

Looking at the girl more closely, Kyouko decides that there is clearly an inhuman quality about her.  She is almost marionette-like, with seamed limbs, and just disproportionate enough to radiate uncanniness.  She’s tall enough that Kyouko doesn’t have to bend over for the link between their hands to hold, but only barely.  Maybe a magical construct of some kind?

She is about to ask the girl when she hears tapping, steps set to a different beat than their’s.  From behind, Mami and another young girl in a black gown and shawl appear through the fog that Kyouko had not been aware of until it was broken.

Mami has a desperate expression that Kyouko has only seen once or twice, but when their eyes meet, her face lights up, and Kyouko can’t help but smirk back.  And even though it doesn’t seem like they sped up, Mami and her escort soon catch up with Kyouko and her’s, the two groups walking side by side.

“I thought I was the only one here...” says Mami.

“It’s nice to see a familiar face,” Kyouko replies.  The unspoken question of where Homura is remains unanswered.  Then, after a moment: “So, any idea where we’re going, exactly?”

Kyouko thinks that she should have asked if Mami knew where they were right now instead, but doesn’t correct herself.  Mami’s gaze drifts to the left, away from Kyouko and in to the abyss of lights around them.

“I feel as if maybe I was told, but...”

“Yeah...”

Mami is as unable to decipher the girls’ words as Kyouko is.  “But if I had to go with my instincts, I’d say that we’re being led in to some sort of trap.”

“For sure.  And considering where we are now, I don’t think we’re going anywhere normal.”

They make no effort to stray from their course.

There is silence, unless Kyouko strains her ears and hears the girls speaking, now to each-other instead of themselves.  She feels like she’s been fasting.

“Urgh, I hope there’s a buffet at the end of all this.”

Mami’s smile, which had vanished at some point, returns.  She giggles.  “You would.”

“Well, yeah!  If I had things my way, there’d be one everywhere.  It’s my best-case scenario for where we’re gonna end up: a perfect world of all-you-can-eat buffets.”

She likes the idea of it, and the distraction that it provides.  “They don’t even need to be buffets.  Just cheap food is fine!  Cheap food everywhere.  Good cheap food, of course. And...maybe the arcade would be open all the time?  That could have free admission, too...”

Mami smiles politely as Kyouko continues to speak, and only interjects when she is finished.  “Anywhere and anything, and you’d want things like that...”  She giggles.

“H-hey...” Says Kyouko, feeling her face flush red.

“No!  No, I admire you for that.  You’re very sincere, you know.”  Kyouko thanks her with a nod, still distinctly aware of the heat on her cheeks.

Mami’s smile again falters, as if she can”t get it to stay on her face.  “The place I’d like the world to be…I’ve thought about this a lot, actually.  It’s impossible, and terrible of me to want, so I never told anybody.”

Kyouko says nothing, but stares at her in invitation.

“I think,” she continues, not looking Kyouko in the eye, “that I would like to live in a world without the Law of Cycles.”

Kyouko’s stare changes to one of surprise.  When Mami notices, she waves dismissively with her free hand.

“I mean, not so much a world without the Law of Cycles as one where it isn’t needed.”

Kyouko is ready to quip back, but her words wither away in the back of her throat.

She remembers Sayaka, parroting back Kyouko’s own words: “The balance between hope and despair remains at zero.”  It is as much a universal truth to Kyouko as the Law of Cycles is, just as absolute.

In exchange for her childhood, and all its terrible twists of fate, she was given a brief period of respite, of nearly-careless happiness.  She is almost certain of this, her time in Mitakihara seeming almost too good to have actually happened.  There has been combat, and danger, but the presence of friends has also made her struggle seem effortless.

The universe balances out at zero - but sometimes it feels like the despair so vastly outweighs the hope.  Kyouko feels that the punishments she’s suffered have always been fair, even if she wishes more than anything for those happy moments to stay, to be able to fight against her grief and slay it by her own hand.  But she has already used her one wish.

Good brings bad brings good, and bad again.  Miracles throw you like a slingshot on to that rebounding path, and her wish was no exception to this; there is equilibrium in their inequality.

Sayaka exchanged her idealism for rejection and death.

Homura is a mystery.  But if it’s really that person she calls Madoka that keeps the scale of the universe in check, then maybe that’s what she had to give up.

She could never tell how exactly Mami was paying for her happiness.  Kyouko can hardly even remember seeing Mami frown without smiling soon afterwards.  Sayaka’s death did not shake her from her duties, Homura’s dismissal did not bring a stumble to her step, and yet she wants this.

Homura would, without a doubt, be offended by the very idea.  There was a time when she wouldn’t have been, and Kyouko remembers it fondly, but she changed just as Sayaka died.  Things coincided so perfectly that Kyouko still wonders if that was the cause after all, no matter how much Homura denied it.  It really was right then that they started to fall apart, wasn’t it?

“Isn’t that selfish of me?” Mami stares at her feet, her smile nowhere near reaching her eyes.  Under all the lights, still shifting, her eyes look like they may start wavering with tears.  “I know it’s not the same sort of thing as what you were talking about, and it’s not something that you or I can change, or that even should be changed.  It’s childish, and unreasonable, but I can’t help but wonder how things would be if they really were like that.  What does that say about me, for that to be what I see as an ideal?  To actually want a world where we aren’t taken along with our Soul Gems as they turn black…”

Kyouko thinks she understands.  She is more than familiar with the desire to act on her frustrations instead of seeing them vanish unfulfilled, to take out all of the horrible things she carries on others.

“I don’t think it’s selfish or anything like that,” says Kyouko, “but I don”t think it would be perfect.”

Mami looks up, her face unreadable.  “Yes, you’re right.”

Kyouko swallows.  “I was lying earlier,” she says.  “I wouldn’t mind if things weren’t that different from how they were before.”

Before.

Mami takes a steadying breath.

Before she can respond, the girls in black dresses, faces and paces unchanged, let go of their hands and walk ahead without them.  They have not reached a destination so much as the path has ended, a sheer cliff in to an abyss of color and static and laughter, and the girls vanish in to that same fog of light that Mami had emerged from before they can reach the final, crumbling line of tiles.

Not used to having such freedom of movement again, Kyouko rubs her wrist, hoping to massage the soreness out of it.  The pathway is coming apart like a pulled thread, decompressing and falling off the edge of the world.  The colors around them are bleeding to white, so that Kyouko can look around without her eyes stinging if she stares too long.  Feeling apprehension for the first time since entering this place, she isn’t sure if she should move forward - when did her legs remember how to tremble? - and she thinks she might not have a choice.

“I’d like to not be so lonely, I think,” says Mami, everything unfurling into red ribbons around them.  Soon there will be nowhere to stand.

Kyouko clenches her fists, the hand that was once held now throbbing.  Had no new, grand misfortune befallen Mami because she's so terrified of separation - and the Law of Cycles makes that an inevitability - that she can’t even realize she was never actually alone?  Kyouko isn’t sure if she feels insulted, or ashamed.  For her, they are some of her happiest memories in a long while, but Mami must never truly be happy at all.  Has all that time and all those people at Mami’s side gone unnoticed by her in the end?

The last of the pathway falls away, taking them with it, and Kyouko can’t tell how long a fall they have ahead of them.  She still doesn’t know where they’re going.

But she hopes Mami gets what she wants in the end.


End file.
